In his heart
that feeling never changed. He was always equally kind, equally careless.
Once I deluded myself with the fancy that in his looks and tones, and
even in his words, there was some deeper feeling than this careless
brotherly kindness; but it was no more than a delusion. My eyes were
opened rudely enough. I saw his heart bestowed elsewhere. Do not think
that I am so weak, or so wicked, as to abandon myself to despair because
I have been awakened from my foolish dream. I can look the realities of
life in the face, M. Lenoble; and I have taught myself to wish all good
things for the dear girl who has won the heart that I once thought was
mine. The person I am speaking of can boast no superior graces of mind or
person. He is only a very commonplace young man, with a certain amount of
talent, a disposition inclined to good rather than to evil. But he was
the companion of my girlhood; and in losing him it seems to me as if I
had lost a part of my youth itself."
To Diana's mind this seemed the end of the discussion. She expected M.
Lenoble to bow his head to the inevitable, to utter a friendly farewell,
and depart for his Norman home, convinced, if not satisfied. But the
light-hearted, easy-tempered Gustave was not a lover of the despairing
order, nor an easily answered suppliant.
"And that is all!" he exclaimed, in the cheeriest tone. "A companion of
your girlhood, for whom you had a girl's romantic fancy! And the memory
of this unspeakable idiot--great Heaven! but how idiotic must this wretch
have been, to be loved by you, and not even to know it!--the memory of
this last of the last is to come between you and me, and divide us for
ever? The phantom of this miserable, who could be loved by an angel
without knowing it, is to lift its phantasmal hand and thrust me
aside--me, Gustave Lenoble, a man, and not an idiot? Ah, thus we blow him
to the uttermost end of the world!" cried M.
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